Don't Call Us; We'll Call You!
A fanfic by Setsumi-san
Author's Notes: 1. For those of you who aren't too familiar with the later chapters of the manga, Luchist used to be part of the X-laws before joining Hao. (I'm not sure why he switched sides though.)
2. The bit about Saint Longinus isn't an Evangelion reference; he was a figure in Catholic mythology. The scrolls don't exist though; I just made that up.
3.In order to compromise with the site's policy my little witty comments before and after each chapter shall now be typed out as if they were a mini-story. Without further ado I present to you the birth of …
The 4th Wall
"So what exactly is this fourth wall?" Mari asks.
"Well," I reply, "the term "breaking the fourth wall" is used in fanfics when the author interrupts the middle of his or her story for a commentary or note. It's considered very rude but I honestly don't mind it."
"Aren't you breaking the wall now?" she says.
"Nah. As long as I stay up here things are fine. At least…I'm pretty sure they're fine. I honestly don't know if I'm breaking more rules," I answer with a sweatdrop.
I know my co-hostess is irritated with me. Kee-ripes, she makes me nervous. Anyone with a gun does! However, before I have time to worry about Mari, Anna enters (as so many can in the fourth wall) and gives yours truly a death glare.
"Oh no," I whimper, "I'm going to be punished by you for being so lazy, aren't I?"
"We have a winner," the itako says dryly.
With that she begins to choke me with her beads.
"Mari guesses it's up to her to start the next chapter," Mari sighs, "Being a co-hostess is such work. Oh well… "
Chapter nine: Just Desserts Get Served
No disrespect intended, O Great Spirit, but why is it your wish to have me work with them? Asakura Hao thought.
He was referring to nearly everyone there in the hospital lobby; especially the X-laws. In retrospect, it was a bad idea to bring all of the Hanagumi's victims together in one place. Hao would have taken care of the problem himself if Marco had not been smart enough to figure out who bothered his precious Jeanne and himself. The brunette already knew what was going on and even played a little game of cat and mouse just to frighten the girls into quitting a while ago.
It didn't work.
All he wanted to do was terrify, er, tell his ailing little brother to get well soon. Yoh was so strong and yet Anna could always conquer him physically and emotionally. (In this case he had been conquered physically.) Instead he was interrupted by Marco loudly accusing Luchist of sending his crazy partners to intimidate the Iron Maiden outside of the hospital. Hao had stopped the arguement, pondered the options, and then finally decided to have a little more fun with punishing the girls and head off to gather everyone who had fallen prey to them. Reiterated, it was a bad idea. Everyone was extremely angry.
"Can you imagine how confused I was when my brother and I recieved a message saying something about a so-called Sleeping License?" Pillica huffed.
Manta nodded in agreement and said,"Tell me about it! I nearly had a heart attack when I got one with a girl's voice screaming in my ear."
"My week has been hellish enough with my stupid teammates! The last thing I needed was to be robbed over the phone! This plan of yours had better work,Asakura Hao," Ren ranted.
"Trust me; it will. Everyone just needs to follow my directions," Hao replied. This remark was subtley directed at Iron Maiden Jeanne, who glowered.
"Know this," Jeanne told him, "we are not allies. I am doing this halfway against my own wishes, but those witches spoke words of blasphemy. I do this for Christianity, not you."
"I realize that," Hao replied, "but you're working with me no matter how you see it. I'm disciplining my own for a change. You can't have your cake and eat it too."
The other X-laws looked ready to explode at his last comment. Only Jeanne remained calm. Her fuschia eyes were a confident drill and he was the flimsy, wet, wooden plank.
"We will vanquish all evil," she assured him.
He smiled mockingly and answered, "So be it."
Horohoro, who had been asleep until then, sat up and yelled, "TROMBONES!!" A moment later he flopped back down snoring and earned strange looks from everyone in the room.
Ren blushed and explained, "The baka still has some caffiene in his system. He's been popping up and shouting random things every fifteen minutes."
Hao turned his attention back to Jeanne and asked, "At any rate, do you think they're talking to your boy toy by now?"
"Yes. He sh-Lyserg Diethyl is NOT my 'boy toy!'" she said furiously.
Ah, I love offending my enemies; thought Hao.
Meanwhile, inside of the X-laws' ship, Lyserg was speaking with someone who claimed to represent The Vatican's library. Of course, she was really Kanna Bismarch.
"…I was intrigued to learn you were both a devoted servant of God and you were Liam Diethyl's son. We might need your skills as a detective," the bluenette told him.
"I'm sorry, but I gave up dowsing a long time ago. I have no need to practice it," Lyserg apologized.
There was a brief and almost unsure pause on Kanna's end before she sincerely begged, "The Lord needs you! Listen, these robbers were also shamans who had the nerve to compete in the Shaman Fight! The Catholic Church eventually apprehended them inside Patch Village borders-"
"If that is true you have no reason to talk to me or even worry. Goodbye."
"Wait, please hear me out! Before the location of the Scrolls of Saint Longinus could be revealed, the thieves committed suicide…"
Lyserg suddenly choked and sputtered out, "M-My ears must be dirty. D-D-Did you s-say Saint Longinus?"
"Yes. I assume you've heard of these Scrolls he wrote," she said.
"Well…no," he confessed, "I only know of his legend."
Lady Jeanne loved to tell tales of the Three Holy Relics and the green-haired teen remembered her saying Longinus was a blind Roman soldier who impaled a dying Christ with his spear. Supposedly, some of Christ's blood splashed upon his eyes and cured his blindness. He became the most powerful Christian martyr ever and an expert in holy weaponry. Why…if the Iron Maiden could get her hands on anything he wrote…her power would increase dramatically! Lyserg's heartbeat suddenly turned into excited hammer blows.
No, no, no! I can't do anything without Maiden's permission, Lyserg scolded himself, But… the sooner we can dispose of Hao the better…and I could finally be of some use to her…
He heard her continue, "The Scrolls hold many secrets of ancient martyrs. No one is quite sure, but it is said he alone knew of a technique which would let a sufferer for the right cause nearly die only to come back a hundred times stronger. The Church thinks he may have written it down in there, and if-"
"…If Lady Maiden knew about this," Lyserg excitedly interjected, "she could get strong enough to open the Gate of Babylon a lot s-"
THWAP! He suddenly realized his stupidity and smacked a hand over his mouth. Dammit, how could he let such an opportunity slip through his fingers?! Well, he knew what she would say next.
"You sound a lot more interested! Does this mean you'll take the case?" the caller asked hopefully.
A few crickets chirped and tumbleweed blew by as the dowser stood in stunned reflection of his lucky break. That was not what she was supposed to say next…but who CARED?!
"Ah…certainly. Nothing but good can come from this, right?" he calmly responded.
"God bless you, my boy! As I said, these sinners took their own lives in a twisted last resort to keep the location a secret. However, one of them wheezed out a bizarre verbal clue just before he died."
"I see. Go on."
"All he said was 'eaten by Patch's middle stone whale.' It's baffling! Can you decipher it?"
The English teen scrawled down some notes, hemmed and hawed, then snapped his neck up in attention. Why, this was child's play! The clue was merely a matter of symbolism! He needed to get in the town square pronto if his guess was correct! A quick glance at the time revealed it was two-thirty P.M.
"Can I make it in a half hour on foot?" he absentmindedly wondered into the receiver.
"Do what?" the caller questioned.
"N-Nothing!! Sorry, I just remembered that I have a…um…dentist's appointment… at three o' clock sharp! I'll get back on your case as soon as I can."
"Oh, don't (pfft) worry! Take your (Ho, ho, ho!) time…Goodbye!"
"Goodbye! Jea-I mean God will get what he needs soon!"
Lyserg hung up. Though instead of becoming another victim of trickery, he turned around and smiled in quiet triumph.
Phase One is complete, he thought.
After the Hanagumi finished their last call they went to the town commons to finish cooking up their elaborate hoax that involved the fountain in the center of the village. Normally, right on every hour, the fountain gushed forth water; but Macchi came up with the fancy of redirecting a sewer pipeline waste to it. Once the green-haired boy guessed that the fountain represented a whale's spout, he would run down there as fast as possible, get close enough to search for the nonexistent scrolls before the hour was up, and finally… well… it could easily be guessed what the consequence would be when he arrived at three o' clock that afternoon.
However, three o' clock couldn't come soon enough for the two youngest girls. Why the hell didn't they pick a better time for digging underground and rearranging pipes? Nobody else was crazy enough to be outside in such heat and it didn't help that their leader wasn't bothering to lend a hand.
"Hey Kanna," Macchi panted, "are we done yet?"
"Nope," she replied.
"But I wanna take a breeeaaak!"
"I'm the manager. I say keep working."
"Could ya 'manage' to lemme have more soda?"
"No. I'm not letting you near any energy boosters. Your common sense completely vanishes when you eat sweets."
"Oh yeah? Gimme one good example of something truly kooky I've done when hyperactive!"
"You came up with every crazy joke we've played in the last few days, including the one we're setting up this very minute."
"Oh yeah… Still, c'mon! Can't I have one more drink? Pppllleeeaaassseee?"
Boomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboomboom!!!!!! Before anything else was said Mari and Chuck made the final decision in bullet language.
Five minutes and two near heart attacks later our heroines settled down on a nearby shop rooftop and waited for the show to begin. They had concealed theirselves a safe distance away while still maintaining a great view of everything below. Everything was rolling along smoothly except for one itty bitty detail: the victim was nowhere to be seen.
"Mari tsumanai. Where is he?" Mari complained
"I dunno. He should have been here by now," Kanna said.
"Maybe he got lost," Macchi speculated.
"What if he doesn't show up?" Mari asked. She glanced at her team leader for an answer who simply shrugged and asked for Macchi's opinion.
"Let's just leave it alone," the redhead decided, "The kid's obviously not coming, but look at the bright side: it'll be three o' clock in a few seconds and this part of Patch Village will stink for a week! We can still leave our mark."
Bee-deep, bee-deep, bee-deep! Kanna's wristwatch alarm finally signaled the hour. What a treat this would be! Fireworks would explode! At least... they should have been exploding by now. What was wrong?
"Hey…nothing's happening. What's with the fountain?" Macchi asked in annoyance.
"Mari, go down there and see what's wrong," Kanna ordered. She leapt from the roof and did as told.
"Well?!" Macchi called from above.
"Mari can't see anything wrong!" the doll master yelled back.
"Did you look to see if the spout was clogged?!" Macchi yelled.
"No! Mari's not going to set off an obvious deux ex machina!"
"Huh?"
"Never mind." Pouting, Mari shimmied upward and cautiously examined the small opening. Everything went well until she was startled by...Horohoro's head popping out!!
"ALL HAIL THE PRINCE OF FARTS!!!!!" he shrieked.
Mari was so frightened she yelped and sprung back on the building to her surprised friends. Suddenly, the ground rumbled and sewage exploded beneath them with such force they were knocked off! Somebody had redirected the pipe's flow and caused it to erupt from the bathroom inside! The screaming girls were hurled halfway across the desert, crashed to the earth like three stale cupcakes, rolled through a cactus patch, barely missed a rattlesnake den, and somehow ended up trapped in a net of chicken wire for the coup de grace.
After much squirming around and coughing up the sand lodged in their throats, they were greeted by all of their victims, who looked very satisfied, and none other than Hao sitting on Spirit of Fire in the very center.
"You see, Matilda," Hao began, "I told you your job required responsibility. Marion and Kanna, that goes for you too. I'm not stupid. When you were out shopping you had left my phone behind, so I decided to mess around a little bit and see if I couldn't get the hang of how it worked. Now, I discovered something called a 'battery' and realized it drains power from the phone the more often it is used. I'd only made two calls, so obviously somebody was abusing their privileges."
"Hao-sama, w-what are you going to do to us?!" they asked in a panicked voice.
"Relax," he replied with a wave of dismissal, "I wouldn't kill some of my most valued partners. You'll just be left up here for a day without your personal spirits at the mercy of random passers-by. Spirit of Fire will check up on you every hour, so I wouldn't get any thoughts of escaping. Afterwards you will clean up the mess in the village square by yourselves.Am I clear?"
The Hanagumi sweatdropped and nodded rapidly.
"Good," he said.
They sighed in relief after he disappeared with Spirit of Fire and everyone else went their separate ways.
"At least things can't get any worse," Kanna muttered.
Things did get worse,though, when they heard familiar electric guitars playing. Uh-oh, there were only two men who could have such obnoxious music...
"Hi, ladies! We heard from Hao-sama that you were gonna be stuck out here for quite a while, so we thought we'd entertain you with the remake of our hit single 'Chimi Chimi Moryou!'" Zen-Ryou called out.
"NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"
The End